Confirming the industry's worst-kept secret, Valve CEO Gabe Newell has confirmed Valve is working on its 'Steam Box', a Steam-powered HTPC geared towards console-like gaming. It'll most likely run Linux. "Well certainly our hardware will be a very controlled environment," he told Kotaku. "If you want more flexibility, you can always buy a more general purpose PC. For people who want a more turnkey solution, that's what some people are really gonna want for their living room." Steam has 50 million subscribers, so there's a market here. As a comparison: Xbox Live has 40 million subscribers.

Essentially, the golden age of PC gaming was in 1997-1999, when consoles were pathetic 480i boxes and had so weak graphics capabilities that developers had to remove two-thirds of the game, and make the graphics fugly, in order to make the game work on the console. For example, the PS1 version of Need For Speed High Stakes was half the game the PC version was. But, can anyone claim the Need For Speed Hot Pursuit for the Xbox 360 or the PS3 offers less gameplay than the PC version? Not. It dispenses some minor graphics detail but that's all.